As it is well-known, a so-called TVPC is a personal computer added with a television function of viewing and recording a broadcasted TV program. In general, this television function is realized by installing a tuner device and television (TV) software in the personal computer.
In recent years, implementation of an automatic recording function in this television function has been considered. The television function includes a function of acquiring TV program data from a broadcasting station through a broadcast wave or through the Internet in order to make it possible to present an operator with a list of TV programs scheduled to be broadcasted. The automatic recording function extracts TV program data that satisfies a predetermined condition out of the TV program data acquired by using this program information acquiring function and stores a TV program specified by the extracted TV program data on a storage medium such as a disk medium as moving picture data when the TV program is broadcasted.
However, if the automatic recording function is adapted to endlessly store extracted TV programs in the storage medium, a free capacity of the storage medium is exhausted sooner or later. Then, it is likely that text data and graphic data obtained by other application programs cannot be stored in the storage medium of the TVPC and new software cannot be installed. If a free capacity of the storage medium is too small, it is also likely that operations of the TVPC become unstable.    [Patent document 1] Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2006-324781    [Patent document 2] Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2005-346826